As technologies such as computing power, network capacity, and a user-immersible display are developed, modern people may make contact with next-generation applications such as network virtual environments (NVE) at their home or their workplaces. The NVE refers to an environment in which a plurality of users make communication with each other in real time even though the users are scattered all over the world. The NVE is implemented by combining 3-D realistic graphic data with stereo sound data, and is an environment into which the users can be immersed.
Meanwhile, a haptic technology has been specially spotlighted in a human-computer interaction field. According to the haptic technology, physical force is applied to a user through feedback, so that the user can be more immersed into the virtual environment.
Since the haptic-based networked virtual environments, which are implemented by combining the haptic technology with the network virtual environment, more induce the immersion of the user into the virtual environment as compared with a typical network virtual environment, the haptic-based networked virtual environments have been more spotlighted recently.
However, schemes of implementing the haptic-based networked virtual environments do not suggest a scheme of effectively implementing a haptic-based networked virtual environment supporting a high-resolution tiled display and a scheme of effectively using resources (limited resources) used for implementing the virtual environment.
The details thereof will be described below.
Recently, the inventions related to a tiled display system capable of providing a display combination required by a user by integrating various displays have been actually developed. However, the studies and researches on the reproduction of a haptic-based networked virtual environment system onto the high-resolution tiled display are insufficient. Meanwhile, in order to stably provide touch information to a user, a haptic-rendering process having an update rate of 1 kHz or more is required. Further, in order to allow a user to visually immerse into a virtual environment, a plurality of graphic rendering processes to synchronize a plurality of displays constituting a high-resolution tiled display with each other and to provide a desirable frame rate of 30 fps are required. However, since the hardware performance of the system is restricted, there is a limitation in stably performing two processors. Further, schemes of implementing the current haptic-based networked virtual environments do not suggest a scheme to overcome the above limitation.